An Experiment in Monkery

Monkery is not a word in case you were wondering, but I think it is accurate for this latest crazy idea of mine.

One of the activities that I enjoy most is thinking and contemplating things, but unfortunately it’s very hard to make a living doing such things. So I figured I would pursue a path that would allow me to think and contemplate as well as earn a living, enter seminary. My main goal with seminary is to be able to communicate biblical truth in a fresh and engaging way to reach people who are ordinarily not interested in theology for some reason. This way I should be able to cultivate my ideas and, hopefully, bring them into the mainstream to benefit others as well as earn a living.

Recently though I read a news story about a monastery in North Dakota that had to shut down because they were ranchers and had an issue finding monks with cowboy skills. After reading the story I realized that thinking and contemplating things was exactly what monks did! So I did some quick research into the daily lives of monks and came up with the idea to try out the monk life for a while.

Mormonism Part 2

The second video in my Mormonism series. The subject of this one is the beliefs of Mormons. Mormons claim to be Christians, but Christians do not accept Mormons as Christians. Being a Christian I have commented on some of my objections to their beliefs and why I believe some of them to be unbiblical.


The next one is going to be on family and will also address polygamy more in depth. I just mention it briefly at the end of this video.


Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=544a_3NFl_A

Mormonism Part 1

I figured I would do some videos recording interesting things and facts that I am learning about in my Mormonism class. These videos are not intended to be a replacement for actually studying the religion yourself though should you be interested in it. This is part 1.

Natural Human Rights

First video post for this blog. I may actually continue to do this in the future because it is easier for me than having to write these posts out. The audio is behind the video, but I figured out what the issue was so future videos will not have this issue. If the embed does not work for you the link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt-vm7Lhb2c

What I Learned About Introversion and Extraversion

Psychology has been something of interest to me ever since I took a course in it in college, and if I could have at that point I might have changed my major but it was the final course so I wasn't able to. Well lately I have been looking into introversion and extraversion. What has prompted this interest has been, as modern psychologists might say, "the way I have been experiencing myself" recently. Commonly it seems that extraverts are thought to be people who are outgoing, sociable, always up for doing something, and incapable of reflection. And it seems that introverts are thought to be people are not outgoing, prefer to be with their thoughts, and can go for weeks without social interaction. Now I think there is truth to those definitions, but I think that it is an incomplete definition of introversion and extroversion.

Life Interrupted By Life

This last week you could say that my life was very much interrupted. Last Wednesday (May 11) I got word that my grandmother had passed away, and while it wasn't totally unexpected news to me it did come sooner than I had expected it to. I had been enjoying a much needed mini-vacation from all the work I had been doing earlier this year and this news changed the non-plans I had quite quickly. Instead of me sitting back and enjoying my time off and catching up on some video projects for church that had been pushed to the back burner I was forced to make a 20+ hour drive up to Pennsylvania with my brother and spend my days running around helping complete everything that was necessary for the funeral. 


Now it would be very easy for me to be quite angry and upset at all this because my plans had been interrupted and I was forced to put in much more work than I had been planning to this past weekend, but I'm not. I'm glad that my life was interrupted like this because it forced me to reevaluate the direction that my life is headed and the some of the choices that I am making in heading that direction. My life being interrupted was a very good thing in this case.

Rules

I've been reading Psalm 119 over the past few days (it's so long it warrants a two day reading in my opinion) and it occurred to me that the psalmist is quite joyed at the fact that God had given rules for him to obey; he is excited that there are rules! His attitude seemed very strange to me at first because I myself do not get excited about following rules usually; I certainly follow them, but I don't think to myself, "Woohoo! I get to follow rules! Yeah!" As I thought about it some though I realized that this should be my attitude.